Download The Feudal Revolution and Europe`s Rise: Institutional Divergence

The Feudal Revolution and Europe’s Rise:
Institutional Divergence in the Christian
and Muslim Worlds before 1500 CE
Lisa Blaydes∗
Eric Chaney†
September 1, 2011
Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meetings of the
American Political Science Association, Seattle WA, September 1-4, 2011
Abstract
This paper investigates the political origins of Europe’s economic rise by examining
the emergence of increasing ruler durability in Western Europe when compared with
the Islamic world. While European rulers were less durable than their Muslim counterparts in 800 CE, Christian kings became increasingly long-lived compared to Muslim
sultans whose rule became less stable over time. The “break date” in Western European political stability coincides with the emergence of feudal institutions, suggesting
a first step in a political evolution that eventually led to medieval parliaments and
the emergence of a unique degree of constraint imposed on many Western European
sovereigns. While feudal institutions served as the basis for military recruitment by
European monarchs, Muslim sultans relied on mamlukism — or the use of military
slaves imported from non-Muslim lands. Dependence on mamluk armies limited the
bargaining strength of local notables vis-à-vis the sultan, hindering the development
of a productively adversarial relationship between ruler and local elites. We argue that
Muslim societies’ reliance on mamluks, rather than local elites, as the basis for military
leadership, may explain why the Glorious Revolution occurred in England, not Egypt.
∗
Department of Political Science, Stanford University
Department of Economics, Harvard University. This draft is preliminary and incomplete; please contact
authors for latest draft before citing. We thank David Abernathy, Phillipe Aghion, Carles Boix, Gary
Cox, Avner Greif, Justin Grimmer, Allen Hicken, David Laitin, Jonathan Leibowitz, Anne McCants, Jim
Robinson, Norman Schofield, Andrei Shleifer, Mike Tomz, Barry Weingast and seminar participants at
Harvard University, Iowa State University, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Sabancı University,
Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis for helpful conversations and comments.
†
1
“The kingdoms known to history have been governed in two ways: either by a
prince and his servants, who, as ministers by his grade and permission, assist in
governing the realm; or by a prince and by barons...Examples of these two kinds
of government in our own time are the Turk and the King of France” (Machiavelli
1903 [1532], pp. 14-15).
1
Introduction
An influential literature sees the roots of the industrial revolution in Europe’s unique institutional framework.1 While it seems increasingly clear that growth-friendly, sovereignconstraining institutions — including respect for property rights and the rule of law — were
key to the emergence of sustained economic development in Europe, scholars struggle to
explain both how such institutions emerged and why they were initially limited to western
Europe.
Recent studies focusing on the evolution of European institutions generally begin their
analysis after the year 1500 CE, while noting the peculiarity of Europe’s “initial” institutional framework.2 For example, in the conclusion of their seminal study of the evolution of
English institutions following the Glorious Revolution, North and Weingast (1989) acknowledge that English institutions provided abnormal checks on the sovereign from an early (e.g.,
medieval) date. Similarly, Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2005) note that European political institutions established prior to 1500 CE already placed “significant checks on the
monarch.”
A distinguished line of scholars has stressed the feudal origins of European institutional
exceptionalism. Montesquieu (1989 [1748], p. 619) was an early proponent of this line of
thought arguing that feudalism “diminished the whole weight of lordship.”3 Recent scholarship suggests that feudalism coincided with a rise of a powerful landed aristocracy that
proved instrumental in constraining the sovereign through the development of medieval parliaments.4 Van Zanden, Buringh and Bosker (2010) provide an historical treatment of the
emergence of European parliaments, arguing that these institutions ultimately facilitated
medieval economic and institutional development; Stasavage (2010) describes the conditions
under which parliamentary institutions endured in the medieval and early modern eras.
This paper uses data on ruler duration — the most significant political indicator that
is reliably available for the pre-modern period — in Western Europe and the Islamic world
to investigate the origins of European institutional exceptionalism. We begin by docu1
For the economic importance of Western European institutional arrangements see among a large literature North and Weingast (1989), De Long and Sheifer (1993), Acemoglu et al. (2005), North et al. (2009),
Acemoglu and Robinson (nd).
2
A notable and influential exception to this trend in the literature can be found in the work of Greif
(1994) who examines the cultural determinants of institutional development in premodern societies of the
Mediterranean.
3
Max Weber (1978, p. 1082) viewed feudalism as approximating constitutional government. Others
have claimed that “the institutional history of Europe, even of the United States, goes back to the age of
Charlemagne” (Ganshof 1968, p. ix) and that feudalism laid “the critical institutional groundwork upon
which liberal democracy was built” (Downing 1992, p. 18).
4
See Strayer (1970) and Downing (1989).
2
menting that after 1100 CE rulers in Christian Western Europe (henceforth referred to
interchangeably as Latin Europe or Europe) remained in power for significantly longer than
their Muslim counterparts. This pattern is robust to geographic controls and restricting the
sample to the Iberian Peninsula, where geography, state size and institutional heritage (e.g.,
Roman/Germanic) can be held constant in a non-parametric manner. Without further interpretation — and in a reduced-form — this result suggests that Latin European institutions
gave these states an economic advantage over their Muslim counterparts roughly after the
year 1100 CE.5 Trend break algorithms are used to investigate the origins of the increase in
European political stability. Results identify a break in Latin European political stability
in the year 790 CE. This date approximately coincides with the midpoint of Charlemagne’s
reign (768-814 CE) and is consistent with an influential historical literature stressing the
Carolingian origins of both feudalism and European institutional exceptionalism.
If the “feudal revolution” (Duby 1978) was the key to the divergence of Western Europe
from the rest of the world, what was it about feudalism that promoted both ruler stability and economic growth? And how did feudal institutions compare to methods of social
control and organization in the Islamic world? Weakened by the Muslim invasions, European monarchs lacked the financial resources to exclusively outsource their military needs to
foreign mercenaries. The feudal relationships which evolved served as the foundation for military human resources as the landed nobility of Europe emerged as a “warrior class.” When
monarchical abuses emerged, European barons were able to impose forms of executive constraint on European kings that formed the basis for more secure property rights. Sultans in
the Muslim world, by contrast, inherited more capable bureaucracies from conquered Byzantine and Sassanid lands and introduced mamlukism — or the use of slave soldiers imported
from non-Muslim lands — as the primary means of elite military recruitment. Mamluks —
completely segregated from the local population — swore their allegiance to the sultan alone.
Local elites in the Muslim world did not serve as the source of elite military recruitment and,
thus, were poorly positioned to impose the types of constraints on the executive that became
evident in Europe.6 Mamlukism — as a military-political institution —- enabled the ruler
to bypass local elites in the raising of a military, leading to a concentrated, but brittle, form
of power held by Muslim sovereigns compared to their European counterparts.7
The theoretical logic behind our historical narrative is straightforward; decentralizing
power lowers the payoff from successful revolt against the monarch for the aristocracy. In
other words, armed local elites in Europe were able to extract a better “soft contract” from
their monarch than in the Islamic world and were, therefore, less likely to overthrow that
monarch despite their ability to do so.
5
See Alesina et. al (1996) for a discussion of the link between political stability and economic development.
This pattern suggests a “reversal of fortune” though operating through a different mechanism than described by Acemoglu et al. (2002). While Acemoglu et al. (2002) focus on the institutional reversal achieved
in scarcely populated, underdeveloped areas, the reversal we propose is one where fiscal and administrative
capacity actually hindered long-term economic prosperity by providing Islamic dynasties with the means to
avoid bargaining with their own elite populations.
7
Mamlukism, in fact, became a defining feature of Muslim polities; indeed, the phenomenon of “slaves
on horses” spread across Muslim dynasties and continued for a period of more than 800 years. Slaves on
Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity is the title of Patricia Crone’s influential study of mamlukism
in the medieval Islamic world. She writes that rather than being a “topsy-turvy vision” slaves on horses
became in Islam the most “everyday of sights” (Crone 2003, p. 79).
6
3
Empirical analysis of ruler duration data is consistent with this mechanism and with
theories stressing the importance of political shocks as an impetus for generating Europe’s
unique institutional arrangements. We demonstrate that European rulers was significantly
more stable — and European sovereigns more constrained — than rulers in the Muslim
world prior to the New World discoveries. We believe that the evolution of European political institutions provides a particularly sharp contrast to political developments in Muslim
polities, which, a priori, may have appeared to be the most likely candidates for growth and
development.8 Our results are compatible with analysis by Acemoglu and Robinson (2001;
2006; nd.) that suggests that economic downturns can facilitate institutional change.9
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The second section provides an
historical narrative of our theory. The third section documents that rulers in the Latin West
remained in power longer than those in the Islamic world after 1100 CE. The fourth section
investigates observable implications associated with the causal channel we have described.
A fifth section considers alternative explanations and possible confounding factors. A sixth
section concludes.
2
Historical Narrative
In 1188 CE, Alfonso IX (1188-1230) of León (Spain) convened the world’s first parliament. By
the 13th century similar institutional arrangements had spread throughout Western Europe
(Stasavage 2010). One scholar has summarized the importance of this development by noting:
“Late medieval Europe had numerous political characteristics that distinguished
it from other major world civilizations. These characteristics, the most important
of which were representative assemblies, constituted a basis for liberal democracy,
which provided Europe with a predisposition toward democratic political institutions” (Downing 1992, p. 3).
If the emergence of representative parliamentary institutions marks the start of Europe’s
political and economic development culminating in the industrial revolution of the 18th and
19th centuries, understanding the origins of these institutions is foundational. Yet explaining
8
For example, Kuran (1997) writes that by the 10th century, the Islamic world had achieved a higher level
of economic advancement compared to Christian Europe. During Islam’s “Golden Age,” public hospitals,
libraries and universities were established. Mills of all types were in use and Muslim engineers created
advanced water systems for the Islamic world’s highly urbanized population. Urbanization has been described
as a very strong indicator of economic prosperity since urban populations can only be supported by areas
with high agricultural productivity (Acemoglu and Robinson 2002). Scientific and mathematical discovery
flourished. The Islamic world, with its large urban centers and prosperous traders, appeared to exceed the
West on multiple indicators of economic prosperity. As time progressed, however, the relative success of the
Islamic world became less clear and by the 19th century there was little doubt that the Muslim world had
fallen behind Europe in terms of economic development.
9
We view our results as complementary to other studies of the rise of the West. For example, by the end
of our sample, political stability appears to decrease in much of Western Europe. Evidence suggesting that
the Atlantic discoveries positively affected the evolution of some Western European entities (Acemoglu et al.
2005) while negatively affecting others (Drelichman and Voth 2008) is fundamental to understanding why
the sovereign-constraining institutions of the Middle Ages survived to a greater extent in some areas than
in others.
4
how Europe came to develop growth-promoting political institutions is virtually impossible through an examination of Europe alone. Indeed, understanding the determinants of
sustained economic growth in Europe demands comparison with an appropriate historical
counterfactual case or set of cases. As a result, we explore the roots of the European economic “miracle” through an examination of the political origins of institutional divergence
in the Christian and Muslim worlds prior to 1500 CE.
2.1
Feudalism, Parliaments and the Rise of Europe
The usual narrative describing the birth of representative, sovereign-constraining political
institutions begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.10 The fiscal position
of the Germanic successor states to the Roman Empire tended to be weak. Unable to fund
military expenditure through tax receipts, European rulers sought other avenues for raising
armies. The innovations introduced by Charlemagne marked a pivotal change. Lacking
the capacity to introduce a system of tax collection, Charlemagne required landholders to
contribute troops instead of funds.
This change increased the power of large landlords in two ways. First, small, independent
landowners pooled their lands with those of larger landholders to avoid having to offer
themselves up for military service. As individual landholders began to “aggregate up,”
large landowners emerged who could ensure the cultivation of land while distributing the
burden of military service across the larger body of peasants. Second and contemporaneously,
European kings — like Charlemagne — required mounted troops, not just infantrymen,
as a result of the introduction of the stirrup. The technological innovation of the stirrup
meant that “mounted shock combat” became the norm in warfare and the large investment
required to purchase a horse and armor for battle meant that monarchs needed to recruit
individuals with wealth to serve as the mounted military elite (White 1962). Mounted
warriors, or knights, were often compensated for their service to the king through land
grants.11 Military service and loyalty were expected in exchange for control of land (North
et al. 2009, p. 79). European barons operating in the feudal system entered battle with their
own, privately financed equipment, archers, and associated infantry. Such individuals often
enjoyed opportunities to increase their landholdings or other forms of advancement as a result
of their fighting. Together, the methods of military recruitment that emerged in medieval
Europe came to be known as the feudal system.12 The net result of these innovations was
the creation of a landed aristocracy in Western Europe.13
10
The decline of Rome as a location of centralized authority was accompanied by a depopulation of
urban centers as Roman citizens began moving to the countryside. The move to manors, and subsequent
development of manorialism, was motivated by a search for basic food security. Egypt was long known to be
the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. With the empire’s decline, trade between North Africa and Europe
deteriorated to the point that former urban dwellers began to gravitate to manors where they might engage
in agricultural production.
11
Eventually European rulers transformed feudal obligations into revenue as vassals paid to commute their
service, allowing for the cultivation of standing and mercenary armies (Levi 1989, p. 106).
12
The definition of feudalism is much debated. Here, we define feudalism as a system of military mobilization and organization distinct from manorialism, the economic system that provides the basis for feudalism.
13
The process that led to the disintegration of the classical (Roman) institutional framework and the emergence of a decentralized “feudal” framework remains a topic of scholarly division. A competing hypothesis to
5
Strayer (1970) provides a particularly compelling discussion of the feudal system and
its consequences for state development. He argues that in the weakened and cash-strapped
environment of early medieval Europe, “standing armies or permanent officer corps were unthinkable” (Strayer 1970, p. 27). Feudalism, characterized by its “fragmentation of political
power” (1970, p. 14), emerged whereby rulers would raise armies on an as-needed basis by
offering inducements of land or other privileges in exchange for support. While the system
might appear to work against the creation of an effective state in the short run, Strayer
argues that ultimately such a system “...can become a basis for state-building” (1970, p.
15). Although he does not bring any systematic empirical data to bear on this question, he
argues that there was a notable increase in Western European political stability following
1000 CE and it was this stabilization of the political scene that allowed for an economic
revival that included higher levels of agricultural production, population growth and a revitalization of long-distance commerce (Strayer 1970, p. 19).14 He finds that during this
period of deepening political stability, the basic components of the modern state began to
appear in Europe (Strayer 1970, p. 34).
The stability of European monarchs evolved hand-in-hand with both increased economic
opportunities and growing constraints on the executive. Europe’s more stable political environment contributed to the rise of towns and a nascent commercial revolution that became
apparent beginning in the 12th century. Peasants seeking opportunities to sell handicrafts
and agricultural surplus sought out small markets and fairs. Markets were only able arise in
places where political stability allowed for defense from bandits and marauders. The nature
of elite military recruitment under feudalism also led monarchical abuses to be self-limiting.
Barons — who served as vassals to the king — had the military means by which to rebel
and demand satisfaction of their grievances (Breay 2002). The independent military power
of the barons allowed for a degree of bargaining strength vis-à-vis the monarchy as barons
could either rebel against the king or support an opposition figure who might meet their
demands in exchange for support.
English barons, for example, came to limit the power of kings in a number of meaningful
ways. The promulgation of the Magna Carta in 1215 and eventual establishment of an
English parliament populated by knights and barons in 1265 serve as a useful example.
Under feudal institutions, the king had the right to demand “military service...whereby
kings expected their vassals to contribute either in men or in money to armies” (Holt 1992,
p. 30). Military service was a source of “widespread and perennial acrimony” between the
king and his vassals (Holt 1992, p. 78). King John’s loss of Normandy in 1204 led to a
the one put forward here was introduced in the first half of the 20th century by renowned Belgian historian
Henri Pirenne. Pirenne advanced the controversial hypothesis that the Islamic invasions of the Mediterranean basin in the 7th and 8th centuries were the key catalyst leading to the emergence of feudalism and
Europe’s unique subsequent institutional development. He claimed that these invasions cut trade between
the northern and southern Mediterranean and the subsequent disappearance of trade led to a sharp drop in
tax revenues, forcing rulers in what is today France to compensate their military with land. Pirenne saw the
empowerment of the aristocracy complete by the reign of Charlemagne. He famously remarked that “[t]he
Empire of Charlemagne was the critical point of the rupture by Islam of the European equilibrium” Pirenne
(1980 [1939], p. 234).
14
A variety of studies show that by the late medieval period, interest rates in Western Europe had begun
to decline dramatically [e.g, see Clark (1988), Clark (2007) and Epstein (2000)], perhaps also a result of the
increased political stability that we identify.
6
growing reliance on local barons for both men and money. The Magna Carta — which
reflected a greater acceptance of baronial demands than King John had hoped to make —
was signed in June 1215 with a “renewal of homage and fealty” on the part of English barons
(Holt 1992, p. 189). The Magna Carta was a direct product of both King John’s military
failures and his future needs, where “war was the compulsive urgency behind administrative
experiment” (Holt 1992, p. 24-25).15 The Magna Carta laid the groundwork for future
demands to limit the power of the monarch in England. Over time, a coalition of English
elites established credible constraints on the executive with the Glorious Revolution of 1688,
allowing for property rights and security from arbitrary taxation that ultimately encouraged
economic growth (North and Weingast 1989).
In England and beyond, feudalism represented a meaningful fragmentation of political
authority.16 Kings — while the technical heads of government in their respective territories
— had ceded considerable strength to local strongmen who enjoyed both public and private
power, including control over public goods provision and land and rental income (Bisson
1994). In the face of divided and decentralized political power, how were European sovereigns
able to increase their length of rule? Our argument is that more consensual government — as
it emerged in Europe, with roots in medieval feudalism — enjoyed an advantage in terms of
political stability. Forced by economic weakness to bargain and negotiate with local elites,
European monarchs developed forms of political organization that exhibited a flexibility
which trumped forms of more absolutist rule. These governmental forms contrast sharply
with political organization and military recruitment in the Islamic world during the same
time period.
2.2
The Islamic Equilibrium
“A monarchy where there is no nobility at all, is ever a pure and absolute tyranny;
as that of the Turks” (Bacon 1819, p. 282).
Political development in the Islamic world provides an important comparison to institutional evolution in western Europe.17 Like the Latin West, Muslim states ruled over some
of the wealthiest Roman provinces and had access to the institutional heritage of ancient
Greece, Rome and the Germanic states. Muslim states also controlled some areas that eventually reverted to Latin control. And, like Christian Europe, the Islamic world possessed a
politically influential “clergy.”
Yet, feudalism — with its complex system of interlocking economic and military rights
and obligations — did not emerge in the Islamic world. Despite being largely agrarian, no
15
At around the same time European monarchs on the continent were also ceding liberties to vassals and
barons (Holt 1992, p. 25-26). The Golden Bull of 1222 in Hungary laid out the rights of knights and counts
under the feudal system (Holt 1992, pp. 77-78). Regional parliaments in France were established in the 13th
century. The English parliament began to meet regularly beginning in 1295 (Bosker et al. 2010).
16
See Bisson (1994) for more on this point.
17
Islam first emerged in the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century and within one-hundred years, Arab
Muslims came to occupy territory from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus Valley after successful attacks on
the Sassanid, Byzantine and other empires.
7
“landed aristocracy or gentry” materialized (Crone 1999, p. 322) nor did nascent parliamentary institutions develop. How were Muslim rulers able to circumvent the emergence of
the type of landed aristocracy that proved so critical to constraining monarchs in Europe?
This section argues that divergence in the nature of elite military recruitment provides a
convincing explanation for why Christian Europe was ultimately able to develop growthfriendly political institutions. We argue that Muslim reliance on mamluks — or military
slaves imported from non-Muslim lands — weakened state-society relations and hindered
the development of impersonal political institutions. The widespread use of mamluks in the
Islamic world limited the bargaining leverage enjoyed by local elites vis-à-vis the sultan, thus
handicapping the development of the type of productively adversarial (and mutually dependent) relationship between ruler and ruled that emerged in Europe and which became the
basis for forms of executive constraint. This is because mamluks were characterized by both
“cultural dissociation” as a result of their emigration from a distant locale and “personal
dependence” on the sultan who served as their master (Crone 2003, p. 79). Thus, while
European rulers were negotiating with local gentry to raise armies for matters of defense,
Islamic rulers bypassed local elites by creating highly-skilled armies of foreigners who had
no ties to the existing gentry and swore allegiance directly to the sultan.
Historians of the medieval Islamic world have come to describe the introduction and
eventual widespread adoption of mamluk institutions as a uniquely Islamic phenomenon.
A mamluk is generally described as a military slave, though the term also refers to such
individuals after their emancipation (Irwin 1986, p. 3).18 Mamluks might better be defined
as elite military slaves given the fact that they were typically well-trained and generously
paid.19 As such, mamluks were not prototypical slaves, but rather military elite who might
serve in positions like falconer, provincial governor or treasurer (Irwin 1986, p. 4).20
Who became mamluks? The most sought after mamluks were of tribal origin imported
from areas “marginal to the settled Islamic world” (Crone 2003, p. 78) like the Caucasus
(present-day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) and Transoxania (present-day Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan and Kazakhstan).21 Imported as children, mamluks often underwent years of
training which sought to both imbue them with military skills but also to encourage their
loyalty to the sultan (Pipes 1981, p. 9).
A number of factors made mamluks from the Caucuses and Transoxania (henceforth
described as “Turks” or Turkish mamluks) particularly valuable. Pipes suggests that one
advantage Turks may have had over non-Turks in their recruitment as mamluks is related
18
How can we think about mamluks in comparison to mercenaries that were frequently employed alongside
skilled knights and town militias in Europe during this period? While mercenaries might be hired for a
particular military campaign, offering their services to the highest bidder, mamluks were bought as slaves,
often as children, and then carefully trained in the military arts to serve a particular sultan.
19
While homeborn freemen were still used as foot soldiers, the “crack troops” (Crone 2003, p. 80) or
“backbone” (Ayalon 1994b, p. 17) of the sultan’s army typically consisted of soldier slaves.
20
Mamluks were first introduced by the Abbasids in the 9th century as a retinue of three to four thousand
Turks of non-Muslim origin (Crone 1999, p. 319). This new army of crack troops became the basis for
the sultan’s strength (Kennedy 2004, p. 159). Mamluk armies were quickly adopted by numerous Muslim
polities (Ayalon 1994a, p. 25) and spread across the settled areas of the Islamic world (Crone 2003, p. 79).
21
Though less common, black Africans also served as mamluks (Irwin 1986, p. 5). Fellow Muslims could
not be enslaved and “People of the Book” — like Christians and Jews — were also protected from slavery
and, thus, not eligible to serve as mamluks (Irwin 1986, p. 9).
8
to the stirrup. He writes that the introduction of the stirrup “enhanced the power of the
peoples living where horses could be raised — primarily in the steppe lands and in deserts
— and reduced the strength of peoples living in densely inhabited areas” (1981, p. 57).
Hodgson also points out the “steppes formed the most outstanding source of young slaves”
as a result of the “boyhood military training as horsemen” (1977, p. 399). In addition, living
in the mountains, deserts and steppes of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Turkish mamluks
were raised under conditions of extreme hardship, leading them to be both healthy and lean
(Pipes 1981, p. 78).22
In order to stem the “corruption” of military slaves from the luxuries of settled life,
mamluk institutions created a disconnect between the soldier slaves and local society. To
deter the mamluks from being able to develop ties to either the local population or home-born
troops, the mamluks were kept in “strict isolation” (Crone 1999, p. 319). Mamluks typically
bore their Turkish names, even after their conversion to Islam, and predominantly used
Turkish when speaking to one other with often superficial knowledge of the local language
(Ayalon 1994b, pp. 16-17). Mamluks were mainly married to female slaves from their
countries of origin rather than local women (Ayalon 1994b, p. 16). The sons of mamluks
(who did not enjoy mamluk status themselves) more frequently married women from the local
population thus offering one opportunity for assimilation into non-mamluk society (Ayalon
1994b, pp. 16-7).23 A mamluk, then, was characterized by both his “personal dependence”
on his master, the sultan, as well as his “cultural dissociation” (Crone 2003, p. 74) given
both his foreign origin and the development of practices that kept him highly removed from
the local populace.
There is no consensus in the existing literature regarding why mamlukism emerged and
spread throughout the Islamic world.24 In particular, why didn’t medieval Muslim sultans
use indirect rule as we observe emerged in Europe? Patricia Crone offers perhaps the most
compelling explanation for why mamlukism arose in the Islamic world. Crone compares
the Abbasids explicitly to the Carolingians — their contemporaries — who also faced the
challenge of creating a polity for which their past experience offered no model. She writes,
22
The medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun offers other ideas for why soldiers brought up in marginal
areas enjoyed a huge advantage over those recruited from more settled districts. Marginal areas existed
separate from governmental authority forcing local peoples to develop a sense of group solidarity, or what
Ibn Khaldun calls ‘asabiyya. To protect themselves from the harsh environmental conditions and attack,
these communities developed codes of honor and social structures for defense (Pipes 1981, p. 78). In practice,
it is likely that all of these factors contributed to the desirability of Turks as mamluks. Those individuals
that survived to be recruited as military slaves were not only physically powerful but also natural horsemen
who were imbued with the group solidarity that would make for ideal soldiers to serve the sultan. Soldier
slaves from Greece, India, Sub-Saharan Africa and other areas on the fringe of the Islamic world did exist
but were not sought after like the Turks.
23
Many of the factors that favored Turkish mamluks from marginal areas of the Caucuses and Central Asia
were not transferable across generations suggesting that there were both religious and practical reasons for
not allowing mamluk status to be passed from father to son. As the qualities that made Turkish mamluks so
valuable were not innate but rather acquired characteristics (Pipes 1981, p. 81), a sultan’s stock of military
slaves had to be constantly renewed. Maintaining military slaves was a costly proposition, then, forcing a
large percentage of state resources into a human capital investment that required constant renewal.
24
The mamluk institution can be considered a “specifically Muslim institution” as it came to be nearly
ubiquitous in the Islamic world and yet totally absent in both the pre-Islamic Middle East as well as the
non-Islamic world (Crone 2003, p. 80).
9
“both fell back on private ties, and in both cases, the outcome was political fragmentation.
But because the fiscal and administrative machinery survived in the east, the Abbasids could
simply buy the retainers they needed, and so they lost their power not to lords and vassals
but to freedmen [i.e., manumitted mamluks]” (Crone 1999, p. 326, emphasis added).25 This
suggests that the superior economic position of the Muslim rulers allowed them to import
the military support that they needed rather than to develop a system of feudalism where a
king delegated land — and political power — to local lords.26
Imported military slaves were thought to be “safest to rely on” by a sultan (Marshall
1977, p. 399), offering the “most efficient defense” of the ruler’s interests (Lapidus 1973).
Indeed, according to one observer, the “principal deterrent to the sultan’s overthrow was
the strength and loyalty of the royal mamluks” (Dols 1977, p. 148). If a “well-controlled”
mamluk army could bring political stability to a polity, an uncontrolled one was a potential
source of regime breakdown and disintegration (Crone 2003, p. 84). In some cases, sultans
found themselves “imprisoned” by their own “praetorian guard” (Lapidus 1973, pp. 37-38)
who were successful at usurping power from within (Pipes 1981, p. 91). Purchasing slaves
— who needed to be constantly replenished — was also quite expensive, leading to economic
problems for many regimes (Pipes 1981, p. 88). In some cases, military slaves came to
threaten the very dynasties that had trained them, eventually establishing their own slave
sultanates (Pipes 1981, p. 23; Dale 2010, p. 16).
Perhaps more pernicious than the direct challenge mamlukism posed on ruler stability
was the indirect impact of mamlukism on state-society relations. Military slaves who “had
no roots in or commitments to local communities” were responsible for collecting taxes,
maintaining order and controlling important resources — the result of which was a highly
exploitative system (Lapidus 1973, p. 39). Mamluks would typically hold a temporary,
nonhereditary deed to land which “amounted to nothing more than a stipend” while living
in urban areas far from their agricultural holdings (Borsch 2005, pp. 26-32). Borsch argues
that the distance between mamluk deedholders and their tenants was as “cultural and psychological as it was geographical” (Borsch 2005, p. 27). Sultans — reliant on their mamluk
coterie for enforcing economic and political control — found themselves “alienated from the
mass of their subjects” (Lapidus 1973, pp. 37-38).27
25
Slaves were not permitted to exercise jurisdiction over freemen and, as such, Mamluks were typically
manumitted prior to their first military engagement (Irwin 1986, p. 9). The practice of both converting
and freeing a mamluk prior to battle had the important consequence of barring him from passing on mamluk status to his children (Irwin 1986, p. 9). As a result, the sons of mamluks could not belong to the
mamluk aristocratic caste that emerged (Ayalon 1994c, p. 205) with important consequences for issues of
intergenerational exchange.
26
This perspective is largely consistent with other prominent accounts. According to Mann (1986, p. 393),
Europe at this time had a “fairly primitive economy” where “no lord could generate the liquid wealth to pay
a large number of mercenaries. The only solution was land grants, which gave the vassal soldier a potentially
autonomous power base.” Similarly, White (1962, p. 29) describes the Christian west in the 8th century
as being a much less sophisticated economy than that found in the Islamic world or the empires which it
conquered. According to White (1962, p. 29), “the bureaucracy of the Carolingian kingdom was so slender
that the collection of taxes by the central government was difficult.” Given the expenses associated with
raising a military force in an era of mounted shock combat, like horses and armor military service became
“a matter of class” (White 1962, p. 30).
27
Extractive institutions, which allow the leadership to siphon off resources from the rest of society, also
discourage both investment and development (Acemoglu and Robinson 2002).
10
The provision of military service in medieval Europe, then, was highly decentralized in
contrast to the mamluk system where military slaves constituted a centrally-located and
ethnically distinct, indeed alien, caste. Mamluks were unable to transform themselves into a
“hereditary landed baronage,” in part because of the “impossibility of transmitting mamluk
status to one’s children” (Irwin 1986, p. 8).28 Thus, while Western Europe saw a strengthening of lords who were responsible for defense of the land (Duby 1974, pp. 43, 162), the
Muslim world saw a deterioration in the bargaining strength of the aristocracy as control
of the means of violence became dominated by a caste of military slaves.29 The relative
bargaining strength of the gentry vis-à-vis the ruler has proven to have profound implications for the development of executive constraint and the creation of impersonal economic
institutions.
2.3
Developing Testable Predictions
The narrative above describes a process of political divergence in the Christian and Muslim
worlds beginning in the 8th century following the end of Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean basin. Rulers in Christian Europe — operating under conditions of low fiscal and
bureaucratic capacity — were forced to enter into forms of consensual rule with their local
elite. Domestic elites were recruited as the backbone of the military corps and rewarded for
their service and loyalty with land grants that might be passed down to their sons. The
“feudal complex” — as this system came to be known – rolled out across continental Europe
to places like England, Spain and Scandinavia along Carolingian lines; feudal institutions
expanded less evenly to Eastern Europe where they “underwent numerous local dislocations
and torsions” (Anderson 1979, p. 411). In the Islamic world, on the other hand, relatively
wealthy rulers with efficacious bureaucracies invested in the long-term training of foreigners
who drew a salary based on agricultural output but were not culturally or physically tied to
the land or even a particular locality. Intentionally separated from local elites and connected
to sultans through a master-slave relationship, mamluks were “not readily convertible into a
rural nobility” (Anderson 1979, p. 506). While the political power of the European landed
aristocracy increased over time, leading to a gradual transfer of power (e.g., control over
monetary rents, public goods and the legal system) from the sovereign to his “vassals” (e.g.,
the landed aristocracy), a similar process was not observed in the Islamic world.
Downing concisely summarizes these ideas for the European case as follows:
“[t]he key to the rough balance between crown and nobility lies in the incomplete collapse of the Carolingian Empire in the ninth century and [...] then [the]
28
According to Crone, Islam became unique among civilizations in terms of the extent to which government
service ceased to be associated with land ownership (Crone 2003, p. 87). While military slaves did enjoy the
ability to serve as tax collectors through the granting of iqta’ (Islamic land grant), Crone points out that
“slave soldiers were no barons” as the iqta’ did not invest the soldiery with land in a way comparable to the
European fief (Crone 2003, p. 87). Interestingly, it was not until 1574 with the accession of Ottoman sultan
Selim II that the janisarries (Ottoman mamluks) were able to pass on mamluk status to their sons. Anderson
writes that “a professional, skill-selected military elite was thus progressively converted into a hereditary,
semi-artisanal militia.....its discipline disintegrated proportionately (Anderson 1979, p. 381).
29
A related argument is put forward by Levi (1989) who finds that the relative bargaining power of
monarchs against their resource rich constituents was the key variable in explaining divergence in political
development in early modern France and England.
11
contestation between the prince and local centers of power. Within this dual
sovereignty emerged compromises, power sharing, and a climate of partial trust
and partial mistrust that formed much of medieval constitutionalism” (1989, pp.
214-215).
The result was the emergence of a set of political institutions and norms in Christian
Europe which have been associated in the contemporary literature with forms of executive
constraint. Constraint on the sovereign did not emerge without considerable local pressure
and contestation. Medieval parliaments increased in importance and came to serve as a
“logical extension of the traditional presentation of auxilium et consilium — aid and advice
— by the vassal to his overlord” (Anderson 1979, p. 411). A sovereign’s ability to tax
without consent diminished under the relatively strength and influence of local notables.
The ability of European elites to guard against abuses of the executive increased during the
medieval period while comparable developments were absent in Muslim polities. The causal
chain we propose is depicted in Figure 1.
While constraint on the executive is surely associated with forms of intense debate,
discussion, political pressure and contestation we contend that it is simultaneously correlated
with longer terms of rule for sitting monarchs. The intuition behind how a decrease in the
sovereign’s political control can lead to an increase in his duration in power is straightforward.
Decentralizing power lowers the payoff from successful revolt against the monarch for the
aristocracy. In other words, the development of a landed aristocracy with political power
decreases the “wedge” between the payoff to the aristocracy versus the payoff to the sovereign.
If the cost of overthrowing the sovereign remains constant, the smaller wedge between payoffs
to the king and the aristocracy should lead to revolts in fewer states of the world. While it
is possible that the cost of overthrowing the sovereign also declined as political power flowed
to his vassals, this point is far from obvious based on our reading of the historical record.
Indeed, decentralization of political power appears to have made coordination across nobles
more difficult and costly.
A key observable implication of this logic is that ruler duration should increase in European polities with the introduction and spread of feudal institutions. Furthermore, this
effect should be most pronounced in locations close to the capital of the Carolingian empire
(where feudal reforms began), radiating outward over time. Finally, the presence of parliaments and existence of executive constraint should be correlated with ruler duration even
within Europe if the logic we have described is correct.
Why focus on ruler duration? The most basic unit of political analysis for both Christian
Europe and the Islamic world during the medieval period is the monarch, whether he is
known as a king or sultan. The medieval period was characterized by the proliferation of
hundreds of dynasties for which students of history and medieval numismatics have invested
tremendously scholarly effort in creating leadership chronologies. As a result, ruler duration
may be the most reliable, political significant indicator for which data is available for a wide
swath of both time and territory. The following section explicitly examines changing trends
in ruler duration across Christian and Muslim dynasties from the mid-7th century to the
start of the 16th century.
12
3
Political Stability in Europe and the Islamic World
Scholars have argued that the political institutions that emerged in Western Europe in the
late Middle Ages proved to be growth-enhancing. Thus far, we have offered an historical
narrative stressing the Carolingian origins of European institutional exceptionalism with a
discussion of Islamic political institutions as a contrasting case. In this section, we explore
the empirical implications associated with these ideas, particularly as they relate to ruler
duration.
3.1
Data
We begin by defining the population of relevant political entities. Using a series of digitized
maps of Europe, North Africa and much of the Middle East developed by Nüssli (2011), we
include all sovereign states in our sample. Using maps for the years 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100,
1200, 1300 and 1400 CE, we assign rulers who assumed power on the interval [t,t+100) to the
map of year t. In other words, our sample is updated every 100 years to include the entities
Nüssli (2011) denotes as sovereign states. In the data appendix we provide the number of
rulers and the average duration of each dynasty (both those that we were able to identify
and those that we were not able to identify) for each map layer.
Although Nüssli’s data set has many advantages, one may be concerned that the Muslim
world is under-represented in this data set or that a data set constructed in this manner
suffers from other selection issues. To address these concerns we also use data drawn from
Bosworth (1996) and Morby (1989) as robustness checks (we do not include these results due
to space constraints although these are available upon request) and we use Morby’s data to
pinpoint the break date in European political stability. Bosworth’s book deals exclusively
with the Islamic world and contains data on ruler duration in 186 dynasties. Morby’s book is
entitled Dynasties of the World and provides ruler durations for dynasties across the world
and across history with “an admitted emphasis on Europe and on its roots in the ancient
world” (Morby 1989, p. vii).
While both Bosworth and Morby attempt to provide as comprehensive an overview as
possible, it is more difficult to assess potential selection issues in these sources. Fortunately,
the qualitative implications of the results are similar when using Nüssli’s or Morby and
Bosworth’s data. This suggests that selection issues are not likely to be driving the results
in either data set since these data sets were compiled independently.
Finally, we concentrate on rulers that assumed power before the year 1500. This was done
in order to focus on the evolution of political stability in the period prior to the Atlantic
discoveries.
3.2
Documenting the Divergence in Ruler Duration
We begin by documenting the divergence between ruler durations in the Islamic world and
Western Europe. To do this, we run the following regression:
durationidt = θt dt +
1400
X
α t · W E i · dt +
t=700
1400
X
t=700
13
0
βt · EEi · dt + Xdt
γ + εidt
(1)
where durationidt gives the duration in power of ruler i in dynasty d that assumed power
on the interval [t,t+100). The dt are century dummy variables, W Ei is a variable equal
to one if ruler i assumed power in a non-Muslim political entity west of Venice, EEi is a
dummy variable equal to one if ruler i assumed power in a non-Muslim political entity east
of Venice and Xdt is a vector of geographic controls (the area of the political entity as well
as the average agricultural suitability of the area).
The coefficients θt , αt and βt are presented in columns (1)-(8) of Table 1. Columns (1)(3) report the results for regression (1) omitting the vector of geographic characteristics Xdt .
Column (1) gives θ̂t which are the mean values of ruler duration in the Islamic world in each
century. Column (2) provides the coefficients α̂t which give the difference between the mean
value of ruler duration in Western Europe and the Islamic world. Column (3) provides the
coefficients β̂t which give the difference between the mean value of ruler duration in Eastern
Europe and the Islamic World. Column (4) provides the p-value for the test of the equality
of the coefficients in columns (2) and (3) in each century. Columns (5)-(8) have the same
format as columns (1)-(4) except for these columns, geographic control variables have been
included in the associated regressions.
The results show that after 1100 CE rulers in Western Europe remain in power for a
statistically longer period than their Muslim counterparts. Although after 1300 CE the same
pattern appears to emerge in Eastern Europe, the results in column (4) demonstrate that
rulers persisted for longer reigns in Western Europe compared to their Eastern counterparts
until the end of the sample.
The entry in the row labeled p-value [700-1100) provides in column (1) the F-statistic
testing the equality of the three θt values prior to 1100 CE. For columns (2) and (3) this
row reports the p-value testing the hypothesis that each of the αt and βt values is equal to
zero, respectively. Entries in the row labeled p-value [1100-1500) provide the same analysis
for after 1100 CE.
The overarching statistical pattern is clear. Prior to 1100 CE, one cannot reject the
hypothesis that rulers in Western Europe and the Islamic world remained in power for the
same amount of time. After 1100 CE, however, this hypothesis can be rejected. This result
does not appear to be driven by decreasing ruler duration in the Islamic world (one cannot
reject the hypothesis that average duration remained constant across the period). Rather,
the divergence appears to be driven by increasingly durable rule in Western Europe. Nor
does it appear that this result is driven by issues related to selection in the data since results
using the Bosworth-Morby data set yield qualitatively similar results. Figure 2 details the
evolution of political stability in non-Islamic Western Europe and the Islamic world based
on the Bosworth-Morby data. The moving average calculated with 100 lag years is graphed
for both Western Europe and the Islamic world starting in the year 650 CE.
3.2.1
The Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula provides an interesting laboratory to further explore the differences
in ruler durability between Europe in the Islamic world while holding many variables —
such as cultural legacy and geographic endowment — constant in a non-parametric manner.
Muslim forces invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711 CE and introduced mamlukism
to the region shortly thereafter (Wasserstein 1985).
14
The historical evolution of the political equilibrium in the Iberian Peninsula provides
additional support that Christian Western Europe enjoyed political advantages over the
Muslim world beginning somewhere around the year 1100 CE. In 1085 CE, Christian forces
conquered the city of Toledo, marking “the single most important advance made by Christians since the Muslim conquest nearly four centuries before” (Wasserstein 1985, p. 256).
Although Muslim Toledo was a large and wealthy city, it suffered “from serious internal divisions” (Wasserstein 1985, p. 253). Alfonso VI, the Castilian conquerer of Toledo, is reported
to have attributed his victory to this political instability. He is said to have remarked that
“[t]he more rebellions and rivalry there are among them [the Muslims], the better it is for
me! [...] the solution is to make them frightened of each other [...] then they will fall into my
hands when they are weak [...] as has happened in Toledo [...thus I will be able to advance
the reconquest] without any bother” (cited in Wasserstein 1985, p. 257).
To investigate the empirical relevance of claims that Muslim entities were less stable
than their Christian counterparts beginning sometime in the 11th century we use the Iberian
subset of Bosworth and Morby’s data. This data set closely approximates the population
of rulers in the Iberian Penninsula over the period. We then run regression (1) using this
subsample. Results are presented in columns (9) and (10) of Table 1. Although these results
are noiser than those obtained using the entire sample, they are consistent with the historical
evidence. Rulers in Christian Iberia remained in power for a statistically significant larger
period after the year 1000 CE. This result is broadly consistent with our findings in the
full sample and suggests that the observed divergence in ruler duration are not driven by
geographic differences or cultural legacies.
4
Ruler Duration and Constraints on the Sovereign
The empirical results show that rulers assuming power in Christian Western Europe remained
in power for longer periods than their counterparts in the Islamic world after the year 1100
CE. In Section 2 we presented a historical and theoretical narrative suggesting that the
observed divergence in ruler duration was driven by the emergence of a landed aristocracy
in Europe beginning in the Carolingian period. We have argued that the emergence of this
landed aristocracy worked to generate increased constraint on the sovereign which in turn
lowered the probability of overthrow.
Although data limitations do not allow us to empirically pin down the precise causal
channel leading to the observed increase in ruler duration, the data we have compiled do
provide evidence consistent with claims that this increase was driven (at least in part) by
greater constraint on the sovereign.
4.1
Princes, Parliaments and Ruler Duration
We expect that enhanced constraints on the sovereign will be reflected in increased ruler
duration. Ideally, we would possess a metric measuring the constraints on each ruler; unfortunately, such a metric is not available. To better understand the extent to which the
increase in ruler stability in Western Europe is indicative of constrained monarchs we begin using the metric developed by De Long and Shleifer (1993) to measure constraints on
15
the sovereign. We use their metric to create a dummy variable f ree that is equal to one
if De Long and Shleifer classify the period as “Free” and zero if they classify the period
as “Prince.” The distinction between “Free” and “Prince” corresponds to the distinction
between feudal and absolutist in their conceptualization.
We assign De Long and Shleifer’s metric to a political entity if that political entity’s
centroid fell within the nine “countries” denoted by De Long and Shleifer (1993).30 Equipped
with this metric, we run the regression
durationidt = dt +
1400
X
0
αt · f reei · dt + Xdt
γ + εidst
(2)
t=1000
f reei varies by i because De Long and Shleifer do not use centuries in their classification;
rather, they group their metric by the years 1050-1200 CE, 1200-1330 CE and 1330-1500
CE. The estimated αt are reported in column (1) of Table 2. The results suggest that on
the interval 1050-1200 CE, rulers of free (i.e., feudal) political entities remained in power
longer than those who ruled in non-free (i.e., absolutist) entities. Furthermore, the entry in
the row labeled p-value shows that we can reject at the 0.01 level the hypothesis that all the
αt values are equal to zero. It should be noted, however, that after this date the coefficents
decrease and are not statistically significant at conventional levels. This result may be due
to measurement error since constraints on the sovereign increased across Western Europe
over the period examined rendering differences between free and non-free entities of less
importance.
Although De Long and Shleifer’s metric has its virtues, this metric is only available
for a limited geographic area and for a limited time period. To extend our analysis, we
use data on parliamentary activity provided by Van Zanden et al. (2011). Zanden et al.
(2011) provide an index of parliamentary activities in Western European polities across the
centuries. We use their data to construct a dummy variable, parliamentdt , equal to one if
the sovereign state d in the year t had at least one meeting of parliament on the interval
[t,t+100). We then relate ruler duration to this metric using equation 2 replacing f reei with
parliamentdt . These results are presented in column (2) of Table 2 and show that this metric
yields qualitatively similar results to the De Long and Shleifer metric.
We then construct a hybrid metric which is equal to 1 if parliamentdt or f reei is equal
to 1 and zero otherwise. Results using this metric are presented in column (3) of Table 2.
Again, the results are qualitatively similar to those presented in columns (1) and (2). In
columns (4)-(6) we gradually extend the sample and as we do so, the coefficients on our hybrid
variable increase, becoming statistically significant in the entire sample. Finally, in column
(7) we include country dummies (based on the present-day country in which the centroid
of the political entity falls). The coefficient on our hybrid variable is large and statistically
significant, suggesting that an increase in constraints on the sovereign was associated with
an approximately seven and a half year increase in ruler duration. This amounts to a fixedeffects test where, even after for controlling for cultural and geographic influences, executive
constraint — as proxied by lack of an absolutist prince and/or existence of parliamentary
institutions — leads to substantively longer ruler duration.
30
These regions include Southern Italy (which we define as Italy south of Rome), Northern Italy, AustriaBohemia (which we define as Austria), Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, England, France and Spain.
16
Although these metrics of constraints on the sovereign are clearly imperfect, the correlations observed are consistent with our hypothesized link between increased constraint on
the sovereign and longer sovereign rule.
4.2
Constraints on the Sovereign and Intra-Dynasty Stability
The evolution of ruler duration within dynasties provides an additional opportunity to test
if political stability is a reflection of increasing constraint on the sovereign. We begin by
creating a variable measuring the order in which a ruler falls in the dynastic chain. This
metric is equal to one for the founder of the dynasty, two for the next ruler, etc.
If a ruler is unconstrained, we expect his time in power to be a strong function of his
(sovereign-specific) human capital (Jones and Olken 2005). Moreover, we expect the founder
of a dynasty to be highly endowed with such capital. Inasmuch as rule remains within a
given family we also expect sovereign human capital to mean-revert over time. If correct,
this dynamic should produce a downward relationship between the place the ruler occupies
in a given dynastic chain and his time in power. On the other hand, if a ruler is constrained
as a result of feudal, or other, institutions this should mitigate the expected downward
relationship between a sovereign’s place in the dynastic order and his duration in power. The
intuition is that when sovereigns are constrained as a result of the institutional framework,
sovereign-specific human capital should matter less.
These predictions are consistent with the data linking ruler location in a dynastic chain
to his duration. Figure 3 presents the non-parametric relationship (lowess smoother with
bandwidth 0.8) between the sovereign’s order in his dynasty and his duration in power. The
dotted line includes the sample of Western European sovereigns before the year 1000 CE. The
solid line includes sovereigns in the Islamic world. For both pre-1000 CE Western Europe
and the Islamic world sample, we observe a downward-sloping curve that is consistent with
the hypothesis of an unconstrained sovereign and human capital mean reversion. The broken
line in Figure 3 presents the “constrained” cases in the Western European sample after the
year 1000 CE (in which the variable hybrid is equal to one). These results show that the
negative relationship between a ruler’s place in the dynasty and his duration in power largely
disappears. We interpret this to mean that as polities become institutionalized through
powersharing, the characteristics of individual rulers mean less for their survival.
4.3
Carolingian Origins of European Political Stability
The historical record suggests increases in constraint on the sovereign originate with the
Carolingians. To further investigate the origins of the observed increase in European political
stability we limit the sample to non-Muslim Europe and use Morby’s data set to investigate
the origins of the increase in European ruler duration. We use Morby’s data because it
covers periods prior to the year 700 CE in detail and allows us to empirically investigate
the breakdate of ruler duration in non-Muslim Europe. Using this data set we consider the
following multiple linear regression with m breaks (m+1 regimes):
durationt = β0 + tδj + εt ; t = Tj−1 + 1, ..., Tj
17
(3)
for j =1,...,m+1. Here the variable durationt is the mean value of ruler duration for rulers
who assumed power at year t. The data identify one break point in the year 790 CE.31 This
break point has a 95% confidence interval comprising [755 CE, 855 CE]. The fitted values
from Equation 3 are plotted in Figure 4. This break date is robust to the specification
chosen and implies a discrete jump in political stability in the year 790 CE of approximately
six years, followed by a statistically significant change in the trend of duration over time.32
Figure 5 charts the F-statistic over time; the identified break date of 790 CE is indicated
with a vertical line.
4.3.1
Geography and the Spread of Feudal Institutions
The breakdate of 790 CE is consistent with our narrative which emphasizes the Carolingian
roots of increased constraint on the sovereign. We further examine the importance of Carolingian institutional innovation using two additional variables. The first of these variables,
%Carol, gives the percentage of a political entity’s land mass that belonged to the Carolingian Empire in the year 800 CE (the boundaries are taken from Nüssli). The second variable
is the distance of a political entity’s centroid from Aachen (which was the capital of the
Carolingian Empire).
The logic of the empirical strategy employed in this section can be understood as follows:
if the institutional reforms that led to the observed increase in ruler duration originated
with the Carolingians, we would expect to see the increase in durations begin there and
then spread to the rest of Western Europe. We would also not expect to see any differences
between the two regions prior to the emergence of the Carolingian Empire.
To test this hypothesis, we use the following specification:
durationidt = θt dt +
1400
X
0
αt · Carolingiani · dt + Xdt
γ + εidt
(4)
t=700
where all the variables are as defined above and Carolingiani is either the percent of the
political entity’s landmass that was occupied by the Carolingian Empire or the distance of
the entities centroid from Aachen. Results in columns (1)-(3) of table 3 present the results
using the percentage of the entity’s landmass that was occupied by the Carolingian Empire.
In column (1) we limit the sample to Western Europe. Here, the advantages to having been
in the Carolingian Empire peak in the year 1000 and gradually decrease (partly as the result
of convergence in Western Europe to the Carolingian levels of ruler duration). As we expand
the sample to include Eastern Europe (column (2)) and the Islamic world (column(3)) ruler
durations are longer in the former Carolingian lands until the end of the sample.
Results using distance to Aachen are presented in columns (4) and (5) for the nonIslamic sample and the entire sample (distance from Aachen is not significant in the Western
31
We use the theoretical framework developed by Bai (1997, 1997b, 1999) and Bai and Perron (1998,
2003). We use the BIC criteria to select the number of breaks using 15% trimming and setting the maximum
number of breaks equal to 5.
32
The data rarely identified more than one breakpoint in our experimentation with alternative specifications. One exception occurred when we fitted a simple step function to the data, in which case the breakdates
790 CE [734,852] and 1055 CE [963,1104] were identified (95% confidence intervals in brackets). Since the
R2 was similar in both specifications we decided to retain the more parsimonious of the two specifications.
18
European sample). Here the results suggest a slightly different picture, with systematic
differences not appearing until the year 1100 CE.
Although it should again be stressed data limitations do not allow us to pinpoint the
extent to which Carolingian reforms generated the increase in ruler duration and constraint
on the sovereign in Western Europe, the empirical evidence provided in this section is largely
consistent with this hypothesis.
5
Potential Confounding Factors
Thus far, we have sought to document that rulers in Western Europe remained in power for
longer than their Muslim counterparts after the year 1100 CE. Through the inclusion of a
variety of control variables, we have shown that these differences are not a function of state
size or geography. Instead, we have argued that the results reflect increased constraints on
the sovereign in Western Europe. In this section we investigate the extent to which alternative narratives for the observed divergence in ruler duration are consistent with the empirical
evidence.
European primogeniture: If European rulers increasingly passed political power to their
eldest sons through norms of primogeniture, this might explain why Christian monarchs
survived in office longer than their Muslim counterparts. This would particularly be the
case if their counterparts in the Islamic world preferred to pass power to siblings or other
relatives. Although primogeniture clearly has its roots in medieval European, the practice of
passing power and wealth to the first-born son only emerged in the 13th century and spread
across Europe up to the 17th century (Bertocchi 2006), well after the break in the political
trend identified in the data on ruler duration. For example, disputes regarding succession in
Scottish and Burgundian monarchies implies that primogeniture was still being established
as an institutionalized practice in the 13th and 14th centuries. This suggests that primogeniture may have emerged endogenously from changes in political stability since longer serving
monarchs would be more likely to seek to transfer power to their children versus other relatives. It is further clear that Islamic monarchs were passing on power to their sons as
evidenced by the emergence of the vizier who would frequently serve as decisionmaker in the
place of an underage Muslim ruler.33
Differential life expectancy: One reason why rulers survived in power longer in Christian Europe compared to the Islamic world could be that life expectancy in Europe was increasing
relative to trends in Muslim polities. There is no evidence to suggest this was the case. Muslim physicians during the medieval period were highly sophisticated, discrediting theories of
humorism which were commonly held in Europe during this time.34 Muslim doctors set up
some of the earliest dedicated hospitals, medical schools and made tremendous advances in
33
To further test this possibility, we have gathered data on the relation of each sovereign to the sovereign
that proceeded him. One cannot reject the hypothesis that the ruler’s son was as likely to succeed him in
the Islamic world as in Christian Europe (results available upon request).
34
Humorism contends that the human body is composed of four basic humors — black bile, yellow bile,
phlegm and blood.
19
the field of pharmacology. Borsch (2005) shows that the disease environments of the East and
West were quite similar during this period with the bubonic plague, for example, impacting
both Muslim and Christian cities. In England, medieval life expectancy at the age of 25 for
the higher ranks of English society (i.e., those who inherited land) was between 21 and 24
years (Jonker 2003). Estimated life expectancy at the age of 25 for monks of Christ Church
priory in Canterbury during the 15th century was between 21 and 29 years; monks at this
time tended to be relatively well-fed, with better medical care than the general population
(Hatcher 1986). Studies of life expectancy of influential religious scholars in 11th century
Muslim Spain show that the most prominent within this occupational group lived between
69 and 75 years, on average (Shatzmiller 1994, p. 66).
Geographic size: Stasavage (2010, p. 625) offers one possible explanation for why small
European polities “were able to survive despite threats from much larger neighbors.” He
finds that geographically compact polities — with lower exogenous monitoring costs —
could maintain representative parliamentary institutions to a greater extent; an implication
of this finding is that smaller polities, as appear to have been more common in Europe,
enjoyed better institutions and were, thus, more likely to enjoy stability. Although state size
is endogenous, we have included it as a control variable to show that differential state sizes
do not seem to drive our result. Indeed, the historical evidence presented above suggests
that the small sizes of states may have been driven by the emergence of a landed aristocracy
across Western Europe.
To further investigate the the determinants of state size, we limit the sample to the years
1300-1400 CE. We use this sub-sample because before this date, the maps created by Nüssli
(2011) attribute many areas to the Holy Roman Empire that appear to have been sovereign
states. Thus, during the period 1000-1200 CE, we believe that Nüssli’s maps generally
overestimate the size of the average European state. Using the data after 1300 CE, we
estimate the following regression:
stdsizedt = θt dt + βCarolingiandt + εdt
(5)
where stdsizedt is the standardized area of state d in year t (i.e., subtract the mean and
divide by the standard deviation of the area for all states in year t). The results of equation
(5) are presented in Table 4. The first two columns limit the sample to Western Europe,
while the last two columns use the entire sample. Results in columns (1) and (3) show that
going from zero percent of a state’s land mass belonging to the Carolingian Empire in 800 CE
to one-hundred percent of a state’s land mass belonging to the Carolingians was associated
with between an 0.18 and 0.35 standard deviation decrease in that entity’s land area in the
year 1300 CE and 1400 CE. The distance of a state’s centroid from Aachen yields similar
results. In sum, although a topic for future research, the evidence is consistent with the
claim that the unique political equilibrium in Europe led to small state sizes (and not the
other way around).
Germanic tribes effect: One cultural explanation for why Europe developed greater degrees
of executive constraint (and durable leadership) relates to the impact of proto-democratic
tribal institutions common among the Germanic tribes of Northwestern Europe. The most
20
significant geographic area that enjoyed both the cultural heritage of the Germanic tribes
and Islamic sultanate is the Iberian peninsula. As we have shown in Section 3.2.1, this region
exhibits roughly the same trends as the broader Islamic world. This result casts doubt on
this explanation.
Muslim economic decline: Although an influential literature links economic outcomes to institutional developments, it is possible that the causality runs the other way. In other words,
a plausible alternative explanation is that Muslim economic decline led to shorter ruler duration. Determining the historical point at which the Islamic world began to fall behind the
West and the intensity with which it declined over time is difficult. Historians often cite the
Mongol invasion of the 13th century as the end date for the “Golden Age” of Islam. Others
argue that the divergence took place later, beginning in the 17th century (Kuran 1997) and
accelerating with the industrial revolution in Europe. Proponents of this perspective point
to the affluence of the Mughul and Ottoman empires which each produced architecture on
a scale which suggested that rulers had the capacity to extract revenue in support of major
artistic endeavors (Dale 2010, pp. 130-131). There is no study that we are aware of that
suggests Muslim economic decline began prior to the 11th century.
The Mongol invasion: A common narrative for why Islamic polities became less stable over
time relates to the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. The divergence in political stability
between Christian Europe and the Islamic world predates the Mongol invasions, however.
Nor can the success of the Mongols be considered strictly exogenous as weaker, less stable
polities may also be more subject to successful foreign invasion. In any case, the data do not
reject the hypothesis that ruler durations remained the same in the Islamic world throughout
the 800 years covered by the data.
6
Conclusion
The Empire of Charlemagne was the critical point of the rupture [...] of the
European equilibrium (Pirenne 1980 [1939], p. 234).
Western Europe was considered an economic backwater in 1000 CE; indeed, the biggest
cities in the Muslim world at this time were larger then any European city would be until
the seventeenth century (De Long and Shleifer 1993). By 1000 CE, however, the fortunes
of European political leaders were already improving when compared to their peers in the
Islamic world in ways that were probably imperceptible to rulers, elites and citizens of those
societies. This study provides the first empirical evidence that Europe’s medieval institutional arrangements were rooted in the Carolingian Empire. We find that political stability
in Western Europe underwent a “structural break” in the year 790 CE — the midpoint of
the reign of Charlemagne, a pioneer in the introduction of feudal social institutions. By the
year 1100 CE the average Western European ruler’s tenure was significantly longer than his
counterpart’s reign in the Muslim world. This result provides the first empirical support (to
the best of our knowledge) for a distinguished line of scholarship that stresses the emergence
of feudalism as an important early step in the economic and political rise of Western Europe.
21
Although data limitations do not allow us to pinpoint the exact causal mechanism generating the increase in Western European political stability, the results are consistent with
a literature stressing the importance of economic and political shocks following the collapse
of the Western Roman Empire in empowering a landed aristocracy. This literature stresses
that the landed aristocracy slowly gained power during centuries of economic downturn.
Eventually, this aristocracy was able to place unusual constraints on the sovereign. These
constraints prepared the way for the emergence of parliaments and medieval Europe’s unique
institutional framework. We find empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that European sovereigns faced increasing checks on their power after the introduction of feudal
institutions.
The growth in both stability and prosperity of Western Europe closely paralleled the decline in the economic fortunes of the Islamic world. While both medieval European monarchies and Islamic dynasties cultivated the types of personalistic ties typical of North et
al.’s “natural state” (2009), we have argued that the interdependent military, political and
economic relationships that developed in Europe under feudalism laid the basis for more impersonal forms of political organization down the line, including institutionalized executive
constraint. North et al. (2009) offer some ideas for how to go from a “natural state” — like
the type of state that existed in both the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds — to an
open access order — or a state characterized by limits on violence and institutions which
effectively constrain abuses of power.35 Muslim rulers, unlike their European counterparts,
had the administrative and financial capacity to import slaves from outside of their realms
to provide military services; Muslim rulers were not, however, able to effectively discipline
this military force through non-military means. European rulers found themselves forced
to pay their militaries through land grants, a process which eventually created a powerful,
landed and independent military class. In this sense, Poggi’s observation that “the ‘feudal
state’ is one that undermines itself” (1978, p. 26) is correct; medieval kings, operating from
a position of financial weakness and limited state capacity, had no choice but to offer fiefs as
payment to elites who provided rulers with military support. Feudalism led this emergent
“warrior class” to be “rooted in the land” (Poggi 1978, p. 32) in a way that was very distinct
from the nature of military recruitment and remuneration in the Islamic world. The landed
nobility in Europe were able to eventually extract both concessions and protections from
the state, leading to the rise of medieval parliaments and the types of institutions that are
believed to be growth-inducing.
This suggests that the Muslim world fell behind because of the inability of Muslim sultans
to be credibly constrained. This explanation is distinct from, and complementary to, recent
work which has argued that Islamic institutions, like Muslim inheritance laws and charitable
endowments, played a crucial role in the region’s economic underdevelopment (Kuran 2004;
Kuran 2009; Kuran 2010a; Kuran 2010b) as well as a focus on the collectivist nature of
“Eastern” societies and the negative externalities associated with informal monitoring and
punishment mechanisms (Greif 1994). According to our account, by the time of the New
World discoveries European rulers were already uniquely constrained compared to their Muslim counterparts. Although trade and colonialism may have enabled both good (Acemoglu et
35
In the North et al. (2009, p. 170) account, the way that society limits and controls violence is an
important “doorstep condition” to the development of growth-producing institutions.
22
al. 2005) and bad (Drelichman and Voth 2008) institutional change in European countries,
these conclusions suggest that the uniquely European emergence of checks on the sovereign
predated the discovery of the Americas.
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Figure 1: Comparison of institutional development in Christian Europe (left) versus the
Islamic world (right) following the decline of the Roman Empire.
27
Figure 2: Divergence in Non-Muslim European and Islamic World political stability from
650-1500 CE.
28
Figure 3: Non-parametric plot of mean ruler duration within dynasties in Non-Muslim Western Europe and the Islamic World.
29
Figure 4: Political stability in Non-Muslim Western Europe. Graph details non-parametric
relationship between ruler duration and common-era years. Vertical line marks estimated
break date in 790 CE.
30
Figure 5: Identifying the break date in political stability for Non-Muslim Western Europe.
31
32
2723
No
All
0.74
0.00
(1.69)
(1.34)
2723
No
All
0.44
0.48
11.17
7.76
8.95
(1.88)
8.98
(3.39)
(2.82)
(1.25)
6.43
11.56
6.55
(2.60)
(1.33)
(3.73)
(3.44)
10.86
2.57
11.73
0.91
(3.39)
(2.95)
(4.39)
(4.13)
12.89
-1.89
(6.24)
15.55
2.00
(6.39)
10.56
(2)
2723
No
All
0.08
0.00
(2.83)
5.34
(1.81)
6.73
(3.12)
1.17
(1.73)
0.23
(3.87)
-0.04
(3.10)
6.45
(4.64)
-1.46
(6.50)
1.44
(3)
2723
No
All
0.03
0.25
0.02
0.01
0.24
0.00
0.87
0.80
(4)
2723
Yes
All
0.33
0.60
(1.45)
8.30
(1.27)
9.47
(2.98)
12.04
(1.55)
11.07
(3.55)
12.30
(3.17)
13.75
(3.69)
17.32
(6.07)
13.54
(5)
2723
Yes
All
0.74
0.00
(1.82)
10.61
(1.92)
8.44
(3.41)
6.25
(2.65)
6.56
(3.75)
2.14
(3.51)
0.11
(3.84)
-3.37
(6.15)
-0.86
(6)
2723
Yes
All
0.08
0.01
(2.88)
4.85
(1.85)
6.30
(3.15)
0.91
(1.74)
0.16
(3.87)
0.05
(3.28)
5.71
(4.16)
-3.06
(6.26)
-1.17
(7)
2723
Yes
All
0.03
0.27
0.02
0.01
0.36
0.01
0.91
0.89
(8)
p-value
278
No
Iberia
0.08
0.10
(1.26)
4.94
(2.66)
9.64
(4.83)
12.00
(3.70)
12.00
(1.22)
10.97
(8.26)
32.33
(6.37)
22.5
(6.06)
22.00
(9)
Islam
278
No
Iberia
0.00
0.00
(4.02)
23.61
(4.20)
11.46
(6.03)
10.65
(5.36)
18.58
(2.83)
9.62
(8.69)
-14.54
(7.41)
0.25
(7.23)
-10.67
(10)
WE-Islam
Notes: standard errors clustered by political entity in parentheses. Geography controls include the area of the political entity and the average
agricultural suitability of the entity.
See text for details.
N
Geography Controls?
Sample
p − value[700 − 1100)
p − value[1100 − 1500)
[1400, 1500)
[1300, 1400)
[1200, 1300)
[1100, 1200)
[1000, 1100)
[900, 1000)
[800, 900)
[700, 800)
(1)
Table 1: Ruler Durations and the Rise of Europe
Length of Rule (Years)
Islam WE-Islam EE-Islam p-value Islam WE-Islam EE-Islam
33
635
D&S
Yes
No
0.00
635
D&S
Yes
No
0.00
-0.04
(2.88)
-0.56
(2.16)
3.05
(2.94)
(2.33)
-3.01
7.25
(4.58)
1.55
(4.43)
635
D&S
Yes
No
0.00
(2.52)
-2.50
(2.65)
-0.01
(4.47)
6.25
(1.73)
(2.10)
(2.14)
11.45
(1.73)
11.45 10.97
13.59
(4.59)
(3)
13.59
(2)
1172
WE
Yes
No
0.00
(1.94)
-0.26
(0.25)
4.65
(3.79)
8.71
(2.22)
15.49
(4.44)
13.84
(4)
(5)
2225
Non-Islam
Yes
No
0.00
(2.57)
5.94
(1.72)
5.23
(3.21)
8.56
(1.36)
18.02
(4.34)
14.45
Notes: standard errors clustered by political entity in parentheses.
See text for details.
N
Sample
CenturyDummies?
CountryDummies?
p − value
Hybrid
[1400, 1500)
[1300, 1400)
[1200, 1300)
[1100, 1200)
[1000, 1100)
(1)
2723
All
Yes
No
0.00
(2.07)
7.83
(1.63)
6.98
(3.19)
8.94
(1.17)
18.49
(4.32)
14.56
(6)
2553
All
Yes
Yes
(1.45)
7.47
(7)
Table 2: Constraints on the Sovereign and Ruler Duration
Length of Rule (Years)
Free Parl Hybrid Hybrid
Hybrid
Hybrid Hybrid
Table 3: The Carolingian Origins of European Political Stability
Length of Rule (Years)
%Carol
%Carol
%Carol
Aachen
Aachen
(1)
[700, 800)
[800, 900)
[900, 1000)
[1000, 1100)
[1100, 1200)
[1200, 1300)
[1300, 1400)
[1400, 1500)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
-1.77
-2.70
-2.64
-0.47
-0.55
(3.56)
(2.52)
(2.81)
(1.36)
(1.02)
8.83
2.00
3.70
1.15
0.39
(4.03)
(2.29)
(1.47)
(1.09)
(1.05)
10.41
6.95
7.01
1.50
0.74
(4.22)
(3.91)
(3.80)
(0.93)
(0.93)
14.51
12.88
12.71
-0.66
-0.32
(1.96)
(1.93)
(1.69)
(1.29)
(0.81)
12.80
13.16
15.10
-2.71
-2.02
(4.83)
(5.19)
(4.52)
(0.99)
(0.63)
5.75
5.63
7.27
-2.60
-2.02
(4.40)
(4.01)
(3.37)
(0.76)
(0.81)
-1.78
2.47
4.42
-2.99
-3.17
(2.92)
(2.05)
(1.96)
(0.86)
(0.66)
-5.22
4.83
6.76
-2.83
-3.32
(3.85)
(2.68)
(2.16)
(1.14)
(0.75)
2225
Yes
Non-Islam
2723
Yes
All
2225
Yes
Non-Islam
2723
Yes
All
N
1172
Geography Controls?
Yes
Sample
Western Europe
Notes: standard errors clustered by political entity in parentheses. Geography controls include the area
of the political entity and the average agricultural suitability of entity.
See text for details.
Table 4: State Size
Standardized Area of Political Entity
(1)
%Carol
(3)
-0.18
-0.35
(0.08)
(0.13)
Aachen/1000
N
Sample
(2)
160
WE
(4)
0.11
0.23
(0.05)
(0.11)
160
WE
301
All
301
All
Notes: standard errors clustered by political entity in parentheses.
See text for details.
34